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Not everywhere. In some places for some things. But usually in very small countries comparatively with very dense populations which makes sense if you spend 2 minutes thinking about it.

This is a bullshit argument because surface area is not what drives up the cost of offering service. London doesn't have just one tower just because one tower could cover the entire area if it were farmland. They have zillions, and managing frequencies and congestion is the hard part. Whether you have 5 million people in one city or 5 million people spread across all of western Ontario makes very little difference.

And go ahead and look at a map of Rogers' coverage. They don't even bother with most of the country - they stick to densely populated cities, and in many places using only older technologies. It's not like they're covering the Great White North in perfect LTE coverage and it's costing the rest of us. Canada is not some massive country with 2 people per square kilometer, it's a massive country with 90% of its population within 100 miles of the US border and practically nobody over the rest of it.

Zoom out a bit and compare the size of that coverage to the size of the countries in Europe. Realize that just the UK has almost double our population in an area smaller than the Alberta coverage zone.

Population density does matter because it gives you a good indication on your ROI on towers + maintenance. You know neither of those are free right?

So Rogers has to build + maintain enough towers to cover the areas of France/Germany/England/Spain and a half dozen smaller countries which combined have a population > 10 times ours.

You honestly cannot understand why their costs would be higher per customer?

So Rogers has to build + maintain enough towers to cover the areas of France/Germany/England/Spain and a half dozen smaller countries which combined have a population > 10 times ours.

No. They don't. That is my entire point. Saskatoon does not require as much infrastructure as Paris.

From the start of our discussion you have routinely completely ignored my argument and repeated yours. You didn't address the argument that Rogers' claims about their own costs mean that their own federal plans should not be profitable for many posts, and now you're again ignoring the fact that coverage is not a simple question of one tower per X km2 .

It requires a lot of towers that need to be maintained for a sparse population.

And you've ignored my comments about how large corporate contracts often involve prepays to remove uncertainty from them for accounting. If your going to prepay on a large contract like this you're going to prepay monthly access fees.

large corporate contracts often involve prepays to remove uncertainty from them for accounting

I did address that, with the lobster example.

No matter how you slice it, and whether you agree with me about network maintenance costs, this price plan is far below what Rogers claims it costs to offer service. This isn't making 5 cents profit per lobster, it's selling them for 5 cents each and then turning around and telling everyone else that if you don't increase the price from $10 to $15 per pound you will go out of business. Businesses don't take a perpetual loss to secure a massive client base, they take smaller profits. So if they can make a profit selling extra minutes for 0.1 cents and a base price of 55 cents per month, how come their base plan with 100 minutes costs $25/month? Don't tell me that economies of scale amount to a 2500% savings in any other business unless you're asking for production of a single jet engine prototype or something.

No you didn't. You addressed the group discount. You've completely ignored or failed to understand the concept of a prepay.

You're assuming they are taking a loss or overcharging everyone else. I'm assuming the government paid them the cost up front(which means it wouldn't appear on the end users monthly cost since it would be split across all departments).

Is the time value of money anywhere close to 2500%? Because if not it still doesn't make sense.

As it is most wireless companies don't even mail out your bill anymore. I assume Rogers is the same, though I'm not a customer. A once-a-month email with 26% annual interest is not the source of the price difference.

I'm saying that when contracts get this large it is beneficial to both the customer and the provider to estimate the number of contracts needed and agree on a number at the start of the year. The cost/loss of being a bit over, under is made up by the reduced complexity of the overall billing/accounting.

So say they think they need 100,000 accounts. You might pay $50/mth, the government might pay $20/mth. At the start of the year they give Rogers $2,000,000. Then they just pay a minimum fee per account(probably since Rogers billing system has a difficult time with free).

They have paid less than you(bundling) but not as much as is indicated by the screen shown to the end user.

$25/month for 100 minutes and unlimited after 6, with unlimited texting

Ballpark that to 2500%. Less if you use a crapton of minutes after 6, more if 100 minutes isn't enough and you go over every now and then and get gouged on extra minutes. If you use 100 minutes on a government plan, it costs the government $1.55.

Understand how these things often work now?

I always understood your argument, but I reject it on the basis of scale. Group discounts make sense - go and ask a restaurant if they can cut you a deal on 500 take-out meals and you'll probably save a decent chunk. But the discrepancy between the government and consumer price is indicative that Rogers is flat-out lying when they talk about the cost of service. If accounting was anywhere near the trouble you're making it out to be, there would be virtually no difference between the smallest and the most expensive plan, and pay-as-you-go would not exist.